Seas

The Seas

by Samantha Hunt

I’m Kim Alexander and this is a Fiction Nation Minute. The book is The Seas by Samantha Hunt.

This is another book about coming of age as a young woman in a hard drinking far northern fishing village. It’s a dreary and claustrophobic place, and the village and the book, and everyone in it, are surrounded by the sea. The 19-year old narrator has been convinced by her long gone father that she’s a mermaid, but not a pretty Disney style mermaid; instead the old fashioned kind that lured men to watery death. So it’s probably just a coincidence that her father drowned himself. She is in unrequited love with an older man, an Iraqi war veteran, to the rest of the world a damaged man and a drunk, but to her a sea horse and her chance to escape. It all sounds pretty grim, but as the narrator edges closer to madness and to the sea, the language of the author turns this book into near poetry. The book is The Seas by Samantha Hunt. I’m Kim Alexander on Fiction Nation on Book Radio, SiriusXM Channel 80.

I’m Kim Alexander and this is a Fiction Nation minute. The book is The Seas by Samantha Hunt.

As little girls, some of us told our parents  very solemnly  that we were mermaids. In The Seas, the author’s first novel, it’s the narrator’s father who tells her she’s a mermaid. And then he drowns himself in the ocean that surrounds their tiny far northern fishing village. No wonder she’s convinced, and waits on the beach for him to swim home. Instead, she meets Jude, who walks out of the ocean and makes a nice substitute. He’s much older, a hard drinking Iraqi war vet, and her love goes unreturned  at least at first. Every page of this book swims in water imagery, and it’s Samantha Hunt’s skill that turns a sad tale about drunks and crazies into a magical story where the lines between the sea and the land and between madness and reality is blurred. The book is The Seas by Samantha Hunt. I’m Kim Alexander on Fiction Nation on Book Radio, SiriusXM Channel 80.